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June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
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Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
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Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/12
June
11, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Attack of the Hog Killers: Why the
Generals Hate the A-10
Elaine
Cassel
Meet Michael Chertoff: Ashcroft's
Top Gremlin
David Lindorff
The Republican Drive to Eliminate Overtime Pay
Tom
Gorman
Greens, the Antiwar Movement and 2004
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia: The Most Dangerous Place
on Earth for Trade Unionists
Nnimo
Bassey and Lawrence Bohlen
Bush Must Stop Telling Us What to
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Julie Hilden
Spike Lee v. Spike TV
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Blair Bros. Change Jobs!
Eric
Hobsbawm
The Empire Expands, Wider and Still
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Steve
Perry
DHS: As Big
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June
10, 2003
Benjamin
Shepard
A Season in the Anti-War Movement
Chris
Floyd
Bush Family Lies About Iraq and Nazi
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Wayne
Madsen
Weaponsgate
Jason Leopold
Powell's Denials Ring Hollow
Richard
Lichtman
Whining, Whimpering Leftists Confront the Logic of American World
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Ray
Close
A CIA Analyst on Why the Lies About
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Hammond
Guthrie
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Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/10
June
9, 2003
Alex
Coolman
Male Rape in US Prisons
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft is Coming!
Lee
Sustar
Is Iran Next?
Agustin
Velloso
Equatorial Guinea: Few Rich, Many
Poor
Gila
Svirsky
Some Lives Are Worth Less Than Others
Dr. Gerry
Lower
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A True Liberation
Ishmael Reed
Iraqi Slaughter, Mayhem and Plunder
Steve
Perry
How to Beat Bush, part 1
June
7 / 8, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Terrible Truth
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species
Joanne
Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers
Steven
Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything
Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s
M.
Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery
Amelia
Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost
Shelton
Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation
Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea
Ben
Tripp
A Fish Story
Sen. Robert
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Where is the Outrage?
Robin
Philpot
Congo Distortions
Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix
Laura
Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende
David Lindorff
The Last Byline
Adam
Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters
Poets'
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June
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Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Steve
Perry
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June
5, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
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Imraan
Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth
Michael
Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done
Robert
Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy
Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over
Paul
Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush
Gary Leupp
When Spooks Speak Out
Website
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Evidence in Black and White?
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Wire
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Cindy
Corrie
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Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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June
14, 2003
They Just Don't Want to Know
Of Dissidents
and Dissonance
By BEN TRIPP
Like a full-scale papier-mache model of the Earth,
the truth is so enormous that it is hard to even comprehend.
And once you figure it out, the question becomes where to put
it? Because it won't fit on the shelf in the living room. I refer
of course to the true reason why Americans are not more concerned
at the patent absence of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' in Iraq.
I spent, I confess, several weeks waiting for the thunderous
uproar that would inevitably follow the equally inevitable discovery
that Iraq had no biological agents, no foul chemicals, no missiles
capable of circling the papier-mache globe and blowing up Daytona
Beach, Florida (or similar). The discovery has been made. You
want mustard gas in Iraq, you'd better start eating pastrami.
Yet the American public doesn't care. There will be no consequences
to the Bush Administration for the naked, baseless savagery it
perpetrated upon Iraq's people. Why not? The answer hit me like
a full-scale papier-mache model of the Earth: Americans aren't
upset about the Big Lie because they never believed it in the
first place. They just didn't want to know.
Wow, that's such a cynical idea it makes
your skin all crinkly. Can it be that the average American so
very much doesn't give a shit what its government does? Can it
possibly have gotten this bad? We were until recently known as
a generous and friendly people, if loud. Are we in fact the heartless
maggots that such a concept would require? It boggles the mind.
Where is the public outcry? Why isn't everybody in America going
 apeshit as the Bush Administration slips into
the same "what, me worry?" mode they employed after
the failure to snare Osama bin Laden? (Osama, as you probably
don't remember was Saddam Hussein's tennis partner. And we remember
Saddam Hussein, right?) Why, he asks, restating the question
yet again because he can't believe it's even necessary to ask,
why is the American public not in an uproar at the administration's
slow admission that they lied about the justification for this
assault on another nation? The answer, sad to say, is cognitive
dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is when you find
out the woman you just took back to your hotel is really a man_and
you didn't get the corporate discount on the room. Another example
of cognitive dissonance is when an entire nation, with world
peace in the balance, throws its support behind a bunch of guys
who turn out to be lying. In other words, cognitive dissonance
is the agony of learning something new that contradicts what
you already know. But that's not all: cognitive dissonance is
also when you learn something new that contradicts what you already
know, so you discount the entire subject as unimportant. "Yeah,
he cheats on me when he travels," she pules. "Who cares,
as long as I get the frequent flier miles?" America is suffering
from a bad case of cognitive dissonance, and it explains a lot-
unfortunately, not to Americans.
We are a country in denial of certain
ugly facts. For example: we are an empire, and we're in it for
the money. Our leaders lie just as much as the rest of us do,
and often about much more important subjects. American Democracy
does not equal American Capitalism. We're not really free, and
we're not really brave- no more than anybody else, at least.
We're just the same turbulent mess of conflicting agendas that
everybody else is_the only real difference is American government
was originally designed to overcome these very agendas. But that
government has fundamentally changed in our lifetimes, which
makes our actions very important for future generations at a
time when we're worried more about the next fortnight than the
next generation. Help, help, the dissonance is killing me.
America is a nation divided: on one side,
there are those who take the "my country, right or wrong"
approach. On the other side (the outside) are the Americans who
believe that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Adherents
to this outsider's viewpoint don't have cognitive dissonance,
because they have adjusted their concept of reality to reflect
the evidence of reality with which they are confronted. They're
just depressed and afraid. The Powers That Be call this mindset
"moral relativism", which is another way of saying
"who are you going to believe- me, or your own eyes?"
The correct answer, for all you relativists out there, is A)
God said it, I believe it, that settles it. This is the absolutist
position, not only with respect to religion but also nationalism,
brand loyalty, and musical tastes: hence the expression "alls
I need is Jesus, Jersey, Jack and a Jukebox." The problem
with the absolutist approach to American affairs is that it does
not allow for human nature- quite aside from being impossible,
stupid, backwards, and rotten.
Human nature is the key here. In a perfect
society, governed by the rules of law and behavior currently
honored and avoided by most Americans, our leaders would be honest,
straightforward, and diligent. They would care nothing for their
own pelf (another word for wealth, Scrabble fans; see also "scratch",
"wampum", and "mammon") and little for the
ephemeral attractions of power and privilege. This is preposterous,
of course. Anybody running for anything is in it for something,
and anybody who's made it to the post of Chief Executive of this
great nation is in it for as much as he can get. That's just
how it works. It's human nature, and I don't fault anyone for
it. Neither did the Founding Fathers (now Foundling Fathers,
sorry guys) who established a series of checks and balances to
ensure that human weakness didn't get in the way of human affairs.
We've done away with said checks and balances, mostly, and so
the brilliant system of setting three separate branches of narrow
self-interested shysters against each other, thus to ensure the
common good will be served in the resulting scrum, has broken
down. It's pretty much the same shysters on two of the teams,
and the third team refuses to play. Human nature is running rampant.
How does this cause cognitive dissonance? Because people don't
want to believe it, at any cost. They are desperate to believe
it's all going to work out fine.
We Americans are brought up with the
idea that America is a better place, a nobler and more enlightened
nation that sprang up because people here were determined they
would be freer, and equaler, and everyone would have the opportunity
to pursue a better life unfettered by systemic oppression. This
is a ridiculous fantasy, like selfless politicians. If you believe
it, you might as well believe in a rabbi that did miracles, got
executed for it, and came back as an immortal superhero. Oh,
wait. What I'm trying to say is that there is a myth -and it's
always been a myth- about Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
at work here, and it's one most Americans aspire to fulfill.
I'm not just being cynical. Well, yes I am, but not as cynical
as you think, thou apostatic baboon. Because it's the American
belief in an American Way that has made us (within living memory)
not quite as bad as a lot of other countries, and way better
than a goodish number- in fact, pretty much as good as it gets,
unless you want to live among auks and penguins and have your
own country on an Antarctic island somewhere. This idealism is
cherished with fervid fervor by many Americans. Unfortunately
it's antithetical to such companion American notions as Corporate
Personhood and the Military Industrial Complex, so things are
getting kind of dissonant in the pinched patriotic craniums of
so many of our brothers, sisters, and similar. We've turned into
a collective special-interest bad guy: who can handle that kind
of a downer?
America invaded another nation, unscrewed
its head and took a giant dump down its neck--unprovoked. Confronted
with the singularly un-American nature of this exploit, our leaders
responded by claiming we had to do it-- because this enemy nation
was aiming a vast artillery of deadly weapons designed especially
to kill blonde people at us. I don't think all that many people
really believed it, not really really. But they went along with
it, because to confront the real reasons for such aimless aggression
would be too horrible for their fragile worldviews and patriotic
self-images to bear. When the 'WMD' bit turned out not to be
true, the rationale switched to exporting American Democracy
by force. Which is an oxymoron, a common symptom of cognitive
dissonance. You cannot force someone to be free, any more than
you can teach them a lesson by killing them (note to self). I
don't think many Americans cared at that point; Bush said it,
I believe it, that settles it. Easier to just agree than actually
question the whole mess. Bush and his buddies were counting on
this. Long before the American people had any idea why we were
supposed to attack Iraq, it was clear to the cabal at the top
that we would agree to the adventure under any damn pretext--
because there were so many Americans deep in the throes of denial
about what was happening already (the erosion of rights, theft
of elections, evaporation of opportunity, and suchlike fiddle-faddle).
Too bad it's true.
The beauty part of cognitive dissonance
is the worse it gets, the more people throw up [their hands]
and say "who cares?" In this way such public works
projects as genocide and empire-building can be accomplished,
because people refuse to care. It's too damn demanding, too scary,
and too damaging to that ever-threatened bird called Self Esteem.
But this is the time to take a good long look at your mindset,
before things get so awful you find yourself goose-stepping down
the Reichsparteitag rather than face the facts. Are you in a
state of cognitive dissonance? Does the evidence of your senses
not jibe with what you've been told is The Way Things Are? Do
you find yourself redefining what is important to exclude what
you don't want to believe? Are you angry at people who demand
you think about issues you consider closed? Do you often find
yourself wondering why everybody but real Americans are wrong?
Do you believe there is one set of rules for America and a different
set of rules for the rest of the world, and that America should
enforce both of them? Are you a red-faced witless baboon?
These are symptoms of cognitive dissonance,
and while denial hurts less than facing the truth up to a point,
it's worth noting that while grappling with a changed world can
be painful, succumbing to the urge to tell it to fuck off can
be fatal. If not to you, then to other innocent people in that
area outside America collectively called 'the world'. Cognitive
dissonance is unpleasant. Nobody likes it. It signals a period
of painful transformation has arrived. But like a life-sized
papier-mache model of the Earth, it's something you just can't
ignore.
Ben Tripp
is a screenwriter and cartoonist. Ben also has a
lot of outrageously priced crap for sale here. If his
writing starts to grate on your nerves, buy some and maybe he'll
flee to Mexico. If all else fails, he can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net
Yesterday's Features
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
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